Conventional inkjet print engines contain three primary components which are generally organized in series. These components are a platen located in a print zone, a spittoon in which excess print drops are collected, and a service station which receives a print carriage unit and its associated inkjet cartridges for helping to extend the life of the cartridges by wiping and capping them when they are not in use.
In a conventional inkjet carriage unit there may be mounted removably therein one or more ink cartridges or print heads. The carriage unit is adapted to sweep the ink cartridges in a path of travel above a medium sheet that is moved in an orthogonal direction to the carriage unit. As the print heads sweep above the medium, they eject droplets of ink downwardly onto the medium sheet which is supported from below by the platen.
In order to avoid the smearing of ink on the underside of a medium sheet, the conventional print engine will prevent the ejection of ink onto the leading, trailing, and side edge portions of the medium sheet. In this manner, sheet margins are created on the medium sheet, which in turn protect the upper surface of the supporting platen from the ink droplets being ejected by the print head.
While the printing of images with borders has been satisfactory for most applications, with the advent of photo printers and the like there has been a desire to print borderless images.
One attempt at seeking to provide a user with border and borderless print images has been to print images on medium stock with perforated tabs. With this arrangement if a user desired a borderless print, the user would merely separate the perforated tab from the remaining portion of the medium stock carrying the print image. In order to avoid tearing the medium stock carrying the print image most users would utilize a trimming device to separate the tab from the stock.
While the utilization of perforated medium stock in an inkjet printer may provide borderless print images, the use of such medium stock is expensive and may result in a valuable image being torn when a trimming device is unavailable or not used.
Therefore it would be highly desirable to have a new and improved inkjet printer that produces borderless print images without the need of utilizing a special trimming device or perforated medium stock.